At least 14 Chinese newspapers declared they would shut down or suspend publication indefinitely on Friday.

The closures took different forms in different regions: Some said they would reduce frequency, for example from a daily to a biweekly. Others were switching to digital. Some papers announced they were being incorporated by other media. Still others were simply closing down. 

They included the Beijing-based Culture Herald, Shanghai Overseas Information, weekly news digest Holiday 100, 32-year-old Sports Fans and four Tianjin papers of which the daily Bohai Morning Post was perhaps best known. 

Two Anhui Province newspapers are also closing down: The last issue of the Dabieshan Morning Post, published in the city of Lu'an, will see its 4,099th and last edition. The Wannan Morning Post, the only daily paper in the city of Xuancheng, will also close. Gansu, Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces all suffered closures.

The wave of newsprint deaths started as early as 2012 in China as traditional news began to be replaced by online and mobile. Incomplete calculations suggest at least 18 newspapers and magazines suspended publication in 2016 and that number was at least 20 in 2015.